An article published by Forrester in June 2022 revealed the state of customer experience in Canada. It asserted that customer experience quality, after remaining stable for three years after the COVID-19 pandemic, dipped marginally owing to a decline in emotional quality.
Among the three dimensions (Effectiveness, Ease, and Emotion) of customer experience, the last one is the most important for inducing customer loyalty. It evokes feelings of appreciation, respect, and value, which are extremely important for customers.
While many Canadian businesses across industries struggle to emotionally connect with customers, some of them are focusing on their customer service approach to improve the experience they deliver to their customers. Some of them are leveraging advanced communication tools to improve customer experience and service.
In such a scenario, investing in the right contact center software can be extremely beneficial in providing high-quality customer service and enhancing customer experience. This blog post discusses how the right contact center software can improve customer experience. Read on and thank us later.
1. Omnichannel experience
In the present age, when a majority of customers have smartphones, access to instant messaging platforms, and multiple social media accounts, many of them use multiple channels to contact a business. Recent research found that about 80 percent of respondents said that they prefer omnichannel experience.
Sophisticated contact center software enables businesses to provide an omnichannel experience. By leveraging the right contact center software, businesses can allow customers to connect using a wide range of communication channels such as audio calls, video calls, web chat, text messages, instant messages, emails, social media, and more. This enables customers to contact a business using their favorite channel and it also enables agents to handle multiple communications simultaneously, thereby reducing wait time and enhancing customer satisfaction.
2. Higher agents’ productivity and reduced wait time
Agents’ response time and productivity have a direct impact on customer experience. Modern-day customers value time and they expect the same from the companies they’re dealing with. A survey found that nearly two-thirds of 1,500 respondents would wait less than two minutes and for 13 percent no wait time is acceptable.
This is where high-quality contact center software can prove to be extremely useful in reducing wait time and enhancing agents’ productivity. By automating many manual dialing and calling processes, contact center software can enhance agents’ response rates considerably and enable them to focus on more productive and important tasks.
3. Fast and skill-based routing
When agents call the customer service department of a business, they look forward to speaking with an agent who can resolve their issue or query immediately and without transferring the call to another agent. A survey conducted by Salesforce found that 83 percent of customers expect to talk with an agent immediately after contacting a business. The same research found that 82 percent of customers expect to solve their issues after speaking with one agent.
By using the right contact center software businesses can route the calls to the most suitable agent (as far as their skill set and availability are concerned). Apart from that, the prioritization features in the sophisticated contact center ensure that available agents handle urgent queries on priority and resolve those on that very call, which enhances the overall customer experience.
4. CRM Integration
Over the years, many studies have shown the link between Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools and customer experience. For instance, a Forrester Research study found out how CRM can help businesses to enhance their customer experience and revenues.
The CRM integration feature in good quality contact center software plays a crucial role in enhancing customer experience (CX) by enabling agents to access detailed customer information, previous interactions, and purchase history. When agents have the right contextual information, they can understand customer preferences and deliver personalized experiences. Apart from personalizing customer interactions, they can also predict customer behaviors and provide consistent support across various touchpoints.
5. Self-service options
As counterintuitive as it may sound, self-service options improve customer experience. According to a study conducted by American Express, six out of every ten respondents said that they would choose automated self-service options for simpler customer service tasks. Another study by CXM Today found that 81 percent of customers want more self-service options from businesses.
When contact centers provide customers with more self-service options, they empower their customers to resolve simple issues on their own. They also save customers the hassle of dialing numbers, waiting for the call to get connected, and explaining their problems to customer service representatives. Equipped with a wide range of cutting-edge self-service options (such as interactive voice response (IVR) systems, chatbots, and knowledge bases), sophisticated contact center software provides quick and convenient self-service solutions to customers.
6. Multi-lingual support
Even though Canada has two official languages—English and French—it’s a multicultural and multilingual country. As per the latest data released by StatsCan, nearly one-third of Canadians are fully bilingual and about seven percent said that they could fluently speak three languages. The article said that a record number of Canadians report a first language other than French or English. In such a scenario, the need for multi-lingual support is extremely necessary in Canada.
Sophisticated contact center software can provide multi-lingual support by offering various features and capabilities such as multi-lingual IVR, language-based routing, translation services, knowledge base and scripts, and more. Just imagine a customer calling your contact center. Soon after dialing your number, they get to select their preferred language. In that language, they can opt for self-service options or connect with an agent.
7. Workflow automation and integration with other business systems
Apart from handling and closing calls, contact center agents also manage other activities such as creating tickets, entering data, and performing follow-up activities. Sophisticated contact center software can integrate with other business systems (starting from ticketing systems to helpdesk software and workforce management tools) and can automate manual tasks and workflows.
When contact center software easily integrates with other business systems, then it streamlines workflows and provides a seamless customer experience. For instance, by integrating contact center software with the ticketing system, an agent can create tickets as well as track and resolve them efficiently. This eliminates manual errors, enhances agents’ productivity, and helps agents to focus on more important tasks.
8. Call recording, monitoring, and customer feedback management
Call recording and monitoring is a standard feature in advanced contact center software. The feature enables supervisors and managers to monitor recorded calls for quality purposes and ensure that the agents provide consistent service to customers. It also provides valuable insights for training and development and helps in identifying which agents need training.
Apart from recording and monitoring features, contact center software can integrate with customer feedback mechanisms, which can enable businesses to collect and analyze customer feedback (via post-interaction surveys or sentiment analysis tools). It will help managers and supervisors to identify areas for improvement and take proactive steps to boost customer experience.
9. Performance analytics and reporting
Sophisticated contact center software can provide real-time analytics and reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs), and provide valuable insights into agents’ performance, customer interactions, and overall contact center efficiency. Some of the important metrics analytics and reporting tools can calculate are first contact resolution, average handling time, average response time, call abandonment rate, call duration, customer satisfaction scores, and more.
The insights can enable supervisors and managers to optimize their operations, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions to enhance customer experience.
10. Collaboration and knowledge sharing
Would you be surprised to know that intra-organizational collaboration plays a huge role in designing and enhancing customer experience? Well, you shouldn’t. As per Statista data, in 2021, almost half of the companies around the world said that their business functions collaborate to define and design consistent customer experience. Another data by country found Canada at 16th spot in terms of strong collaboration between individual business functions within organizations to design customer experience.
By leveraging sophisticated contact center software, agents and employees in various departments can collaborate. Cutting-edge features such as shared workspaces, internal chat, and knowledge-sharing platforms can be extremely useful. Apart from that, agents can seek help from subject matter experts and resolve customer issues collectively in real time, which can result in higher customer experience.
In conclusion,
Providing high-quality customer experience consistently may be easy while using one or two communication channels but it can be extremely challenging when leveraging a wide range of channels.
Adopting sophisticated communication tools such as high-quality contact center software can help in delivering exceptional customer experience. If you’re considering leveraging advanced contact center software in Canada, look for a vendor with years of experience and a proven track record.
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